They sat silently and flipped through the magazines on the stand. It was five more minutes before the buzzer sounded and they were waved into the inner sanctum.
“My client,” said the counselor, “wishes to cooperate. With the understanding, of course, that he can cease answering questions at any time.”
Wiggins had met Smoke Judy on five different occasions. Judy knew that AeroTech needed contracts and offered to help in return for a small cash payment and some stock. On two occasions he talked about a job after he retired. Wiggins had been noncommittal about the job, but had agreed to the money and the stock. Five thousand dollars cash and a bearer certificate for a thousand shares of AeroTech — currently worth $12.75 each — had bought the com- pany an advance peek at the flight control data for the TRX proto- type. The navy was just floating a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the fly-by-wire system. AeroTech bid for the chip business and won the contract.
All this Wiggins admitted, but he stoutly denied any wrongdo- ing. “This company, it needs the business. And we underbid every other contractor for those chips. We saved the government a lot of money. We didn’t do anything that other defense contractors don’t routinely do. It’s a cutthroat business.”
The FBI agents seemed unimpressed.
“Listen, if I hadn’t agreed to Judy’s offer, he would have peddled that information to my competitors. Then where would I have been? No contract. I have a duty to this company.” Color returned to Homer Wigging’ cheeks.
“Of course,” Dreyfus said, “you could have called us when Judy first approached you.”
“I’ve spent fifteen years building this business. I did it with my bare hands, with no money, with a ton of sweat, taking risks that would scare the wits out of a Vegas gambler. I built it!” Camacho found himself staring at Wiggins’ gold wedding ring and gold class ring. Was that Yale?
“Now the navy wants me to make E-PROMs cheaper than any- one else. So I do. And this is the gratitude, this is the reward! l am treated like a criminal!” He sprayed saliva across the desk, and for the first time Camacho saw the drive and determination that had built a successful corporation.
“I am treated like a criminal for doing what everyone else does and for making E-PROM chips cheaper than anyone else can.”
Camacho looked at his watch: 5:30. Maybe he was still in the office. “Do you want to go to jail tonight?”
Wiggins gaped. The blood drained from his face, and for a mo- ment Camacho thought he had stopped breathing.
“No,” he whispered.
“Now see here—” the lawyer began, but Camacho cut him off with a jab of his hand.
“Have you talked to Judy this week?”
“No. No!”
“I want you to call him for me. I’ll tell you what to say- I’ll listen on an extension. You will say precisely what I tell you and nothing else. Will you do it?”
“What choice do I have?” Wiggins was recovering. This man’s recuperative powers were excellent. He could handle it.
“You don’t go to jail this evening. I make my report to the Justice Department and they take it from there. If they indict you, that’s their business. My report will show that you cooperated.”
“I’ll make the call.”
“Homer,” said Nash, “maybe—“
“I’ll make the call. And you go on home, Prescott. Thanks for being here this afternoon. I’ll call you.”
“Are you sure you—?”
Wiggins was examining his hands. Martin Prescott Nash rose from his chair and went out the door. It swung shut behind him.
“Smoke, this is Homer Wiggins.”
“I told you never to call me—“
“Something’s come up. The FBI are here, in Detroit. They’re checking out the chips. I’m just letting you know.”
Smoke Judy was silent for several seconds. “Have they talked to you?”
“Yes.”
“What—?” His voice fell. “Do they know?”
“About you? I don’t know. I think — they might. Definitely.”
“Did you—?”
“I’ve got to go now. Smoke. I just wanted you to know.” Wig- gins held the instrument away from his ear, and at a nod from Camacho, Dreyfus simultaneously depressed the buttons on both telephones, severing the connection.
When they were alone in the car on the way back to the airport, Camacho said, “I got a little job for you tomorrow, Dreyfus. We’re going to need all our people, and you’ll probably have to borrow a bunch.”
Dreyfus fished out his pipe and tobacco and merely glanced at his boss.
“I want to keep track of a man. We’ll need discreet surveillance teams, couple of choppers and the electronics boys.”
“Anyone I know.”
“Nope. It’s my next-door neighbor, guy named Harlan Al- bright.”
“You know, in my fifteen years in the FBI I have never felt more like a mushroom than I have working for you. You’ve kept me in the dark and shoveled shit at me for eighteen months now. If you got croaked tomorrow, I couldn’t even tell the old man what the hell you were working on. I don’t know.”
Camacho, behind the wheel, kept his eyes on the road. “The electronics guys already put listening devices in his house, three days ago when his air conditioning went out. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.”
Dreyfus got his pipe going strongly and rolled down his window. The car’s air conditioning was going full blast. “Think he’s screw- ing your wife?”
“Read the security regulations lately, Dreyfus?”
“Listen, boss. And listen good. You want good solid work from me but you don’t want me to know anything. Now I am just about one day away from submitting my resignation. I don’t need this shit and I’m not gonna keep taking it! Not for you, not for the old man, not for the Director, not for any of you spook dingdongs. And you can put that in my final evaluation!”
Camacho braked the car to a stop at a light. He just sat there behind the wheel, watching the light, waiting for it to change. When it did, he glanced left and hesitated. An old junker car was going to run the red. As it hurled by, Dreyms leaned out his win- dow with his middle finger jabbed prominently aloft. Camacho took his foot off the brake and fed gas. “Okay,” Luis Camacho said. “You want to know what’s going on. I’ll tell you.” And he did.
25
On Saturday the sun rose into a clean, bright sky, a pleasant change from the haze that had been stalled over the Potomac River basin for a week. The morning weatherman credited a cold front that had swept through during the night and blessed the metropolitan Washington area with some much-needed showers.
Commander Smoke Judy absorbed the weather information while he scraped at his chin. He had acquired the habit of listening to the morning forecasts during his twenty years in naval aviation, and it was hard to break. Yet he wasn’t paying much attention. His mind was on other things.
After finishing at the sink and dressing, he poured himself a glass of orange juice and opened the sliding glass door to his apart- ment balcony. The view was excellent, considering he was only six floors up. From out here he could see the gleam of the Potomac and, on the horizon, the jutting spire of the Washington Monu- ment. As usual, the jets were droning into and out of National Airport. Even with that cold front last night today would be hot Already the sun had a bite to it
He sat on the little folding chair in the sun and thought once again about Harold Strong and the flight control data and Homer T. Wiggins of AeroTech. Nothing in life ever works out just the way you think it will, he told himself
